Martin Kettle's Blog, page 39
September 24, 2019
The supreme court judgment is a devastating blow for a failed prime minister | Martin Kettle
Boris Johnson’s position must be in question. But this ruling bolsters parliament against many other outside forces
The supreme court has delivered a comprehensive demolition of Boris Johnson’s government and its handling of Brexit. The unanimous judgment of the 11 justices, announced by Lady Hale this morning, amounts to a root and branch rejection of the prime minister’s attempts to rule without parliament, to take Britain out of the European Union by 31 October without a deal, and to contrive a premature general election. The judgment was incisive and without any waffle. It was very consciously written in the best tradition of British constitutional law, of which parliamentary sovereignty is the foundational rock.
The immediate effect of the judgment is devastating for Johnson. It is expressed so cogently and unambiguously that it will be difficult for him to wriggle out of it – even though he is certainly foolish enough to try. Parliament will surely be recalled on Tuesday – since, as the judgment said, it has not been prorogued in the first place. Johnson’s efforts, to the extent that they exist at all, to negotiate a new or tweaked deal with the EU will be held up to the light. And, since Johnson spectacularly lacks a majority in the House of Commons, it is likely that the cross-party efforts to shape Brexit will be redoubled.
Pressure on Johnson to quit will surely be central to the way this all plays out in the coming days
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September 20, 2019
'Some people I will never convince': Cameron reflects on his Brexit legacy
After three years of silence, the former PM wants to reclaim the right to be heard on the issue that defines his premiership
Towards the end of our conversation about his new memoir, For the Record, David Cameron’s mobile rings. His daughter Nancy is on the line. She wants to know if he will be free to come and see her awarded a school prize. “I’ll be there, darling,” he assures her. “I’ve almost finished all these hideous interviews.”
For the past week, and for the first time in more than three years, Cameron has barely been off the airwaves or out of the media. The hideous interviews have come thick and fast. Some of the headlines they have made have been calculated, like the settling of scores with Boris Johnson and Michael Gove over Brexit. Others have been inadvertent, like the revelation that Cameron lobbied for the Queen to “raise an eyebrow” about the Scottish independence campaign during the referendum in 2014.
Continue reading...September 11, 2019
Why it’s time to take the Liberal Democrats seriously again | Martin Kettle
Its pro-EU stance has made Jo Swinson’s party a prime player once more. To stay in the game, it needs a vision beyond Brexit
Beneath the soaring arches of Westminster Abbey at Paddy Ashdown’s memorial service on Tuesday, it was sometimes tempting to imagine Britain’s liberal tradition regaining something of its former eminence. As the service came to an end, and with a theatricality fully worthy of the former Liberal Democrat leader himself, a valedictory Last Post was followed by a summons to action in the Reveille. A sense of resumed purpose was unmistakable in the sunlit chatter outside the abbey.
Related: The Lib Dems’ plan to revoke article 50 is as undemocratic as the race to no deal | Stephen Kinnock
Related: 'A man for ideals': former PMs pay tribute to Paddy Ashdown
Continue reading...September 5, 2019
Johnson is acting like a winner. But reality may have other ideas | Martin Kettle
Although the prime minister wants to frame any election as a people versus parliament battle, there’s no easy path to victory
When a football team loses its first four games of the season, the manager’s job is on the line. Could the same thing happen with Boris Johnson’s prime ministership? It seems unlikely, so soon after the ousting of Theresa May. And yet politics, like football, is a results-driven game.
This week, Johnson lost four big votes in the Commons. Last week he lost Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson too. On Tuesday he threw 21 MPs out of his party. On Thursday he even drove his own brother out as well. The damage that Johnson is willing to inflict on politics appears limitless. But it may also extend to Tory prospects in the general election he is so keen to hold.
Related: Boris Johnson to seek general election again on Monday
Continue reading...August 23, 2019
How luxury hotels such as Biarritz’s Hôtel du Palais have helped shape history | Martin Kettle
The venue for this weekend’s G7 summit played a pivotal role in Edwardian politics
Few hotels in the world can claim a more storied past than the Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz, where the G7 rich nation summiteers will sit in splendour to discuss world poverty this weekend. Guarded by hundreds of riot police, Emmanuel Macron and his guests will meet inside what the French newspaper Libération this week called their “gold bunker” – the ornate Second Empire hotel that stands on the beach at the heart of a luxury Atlantic coast resort town that is still, as Libé put it in the original Franglais, “une des capitales françaises du bling-bling”.
Related: G7 leaders need some clear-the-air talks rather than fake smiles | Larry Elliott
Continue reading...August 22, 2019
Letters: Paul Barker obituary
Under the creative editorship of Paul Barker there was certainly a lot of intellectual excitement to be found in the magazine New Society. But it also displayed an extraordinary graphic range, built up by the designer, Richard Hollis. And there was also the bedrock of social policy and social work, with ads that kept the magazine in being.
In the late 1990s, when I arrived at the London School of Economics to do a PhD 25 years after being New Societty’s education correspondent, it was gratifying to be met by senior professors asking if I was “the” Anne Corbett. But then those professors were among the magazine’s first champions: as the students reading the regular contributions of those of us writing the social policy notes and doing the reportage, and themselves contributing their first articles.
Anne Corbett
August 21, 2019
Britain and Italy are now the terrible twins of Europe | Martin Kettle
Poles apart for decades, the similarities are now uncanny as populist governments produce ever more extreme policies
For most of the time since 1945, the politics and government of Britain and Italy have seemed like polar opposites. True, both were important European powers. True too, each had a place among the world’s major economies. Even now, Britain and Italy will be among the select group of economically powerful nations whose leaders will gather in the Second Empire splendour of Biarritz’s Hotel du Palais this weekend for the latest G7 summit.
Related: Italy's Matteo Salvini calls for fresh elections as coalition fractures
Continue reading...August 15, 2019
Comment: The accusations go back years – so why has the opera world rallied round Plácido Domingo?
Opera houses might have turned a blind eye to sexually predatory behaviour in the past, but no-one should be above the law
Nearly 30 years ago, a famous soprano told me privately that Plácido Domingo was “a bit of a groper”. She herself had been the object of the tenor’s unwanted sexual attentions during a car journey, she told me. Unwanted but not, it seems, unwonted. In the world of opera, she added, Domingo’s habit was well-known and not unique.
The soprano was a woman who could take care of herself. She told me about Domingo almost in passing and certainly not for quotation or because she thought the story should become public. It was private information. I have never written anything about it until now. But times have changed, and rightly so. Whether the opera world has changed with it is another question.
Related: Yes, classical music has a harassment problem – and now's the time for change
Continue reading...August 14, 2019
The UK faces a nation-defining battle that will split the Tory party | Martin Kettle
Whether Boris Johnson negotiates with the EU or ignores parliament and continues with no deal, his party will never be the same again
Throughout his nine years in Conservative-led British cabinets, Philip Hammond was regularly compared to AA Milne’s Eeyore. But what the lugubrious former chancellor did today was almost Tiggerish. By warning that Boris Johnson’s government is set on driving through a no-deal Brexit that parliament will oppose he gave the UK’s indolent August politics a much-needed wake-up call.
In the three weeks since a hard-Brexit Tory coup put Johnson into Downing Street, politics has drifted into La-La land. An accumulated combination of long parliamentary stalemate, public weariness, an ineffectual Labour opposition, a compliant press and the well-executed strategy of the new Tory leader has made the Johnson government’s Brexit policy seem more inevitable than it actually is. By breaking cover, Hammond has provided an overdue reminder that the facts are still the facts.
Brexit recasts voter loyalties in ways that threaten the Tory reputation as the UK's most successful electoral force
Related: Johnson’s government doesn’t care about no-deal sceptics like Philip Hammond | Katy Balls
Continue reading...August 7, 2019
Deal or no deal? It’s not really up to Dominic Cummings | Martin Kettle
Media obsession with powerful advisers is not new. The influence of Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson was the stuff of hysteria in the Tony Blair years. Bernard Ingham and Marcia Williams were accused of having undue power during the eras of Margaret Thatcher and Harold Wilson. Right back to the original éminence grise in 17th century France, Père Joseph, and probably beyond, the mystique of the all-seeing adviser behind the throne has been a constant theme.
But how well grounded is this in reality? What we do know is that those who work in the shadows are catnip to journalists who know less than they pretend about the workings of government. This is especially true in an embittered political era with a taste for conspiracy theories that seem to offer partisan observers simple explanations of complicated events. Sometimes the credulity can be abject.
Dominic Cummings, the son of an oil rig project manager and a special needs teacher, was born in Durham in 1971. He attended a state primary school followed by the fee-paying Durham school and, in 1994, Oxford University, where he studied ancient and modern history.
Related: The only way to stop the catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit? Revoke article 50 | Jonathan Lis
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